When we talk about native advertising, we’re talking about the kind of ads that take the form of content that users might expect to see on the site anyway. This can come in the form of videos, images, articles, tweets, status updates or other media, but all in all, it’s a trend that is rising quickly. Even as the trend is clearly pointing upward, some are concerned about what this means for the future of content and paid messaging, as a new eMarketer report indicates.

Do you think native advertising is a good direction for online ads to be trending in? Why or why not? Share your thoughts in the comments.

For a better understanding of native advertising, take a look at this infographic Solve Media put out a few months ago (via Mashable), attempting to explain it:

Despite those trying to draw lines between adverotirals and native advertising, Google pretty much sees them as going hand in hand. This makes sense, because either way, it’s a message that is being paid for, and if it’s being paid for, and it’s passing PageRank, that is a violation of Google’s quality guidelines, and will get you penalized.

In fact, while this is already something Google has frowned upon, the company has recently indicated that it will be cracking down on this more, so beware of that.

We recently looked at a video from Google’s Matt Cutts in which he ran down a lot of the changes Google is planning on making in the coming months, and he specifically talked about advertorials and native advertising during part of it. Here’s the video again, in case you missed it:

“We’ve also been looking at advertorials,” he said. “That is sort of native advertising – and those sorts of things that violate our quality guidelines. So, again, if someone pays for coverage, or pays for an ad or something like that, those ads should not flow PageRank. We’ve seen a few sites in the U.S. and around the world that take money and do link to websites, and pass PageRank, so we’ll be looking at some efforts to be a little bit stronger on our enforcement as advertorials that violate our quality guidelines.”

“There’s nothing wrong inherently with advertorials or native advertising, but they should not flow PageRank, and there should be clear and conspicuous disclosure, so that users realize that something is paid – not organic or editorial,” he added.

So, even as we see more and more of this kind of advertising saturating the web, webmasters better make sure they’re not also saturating Google’s index, because the search giant will not be shy about holding your site accountable, and that could have the opposite effect from the one you intended with the advertorial in the first place. Good luck finding advertisers when your site can’t be found in Google.

Beyond Google, as mentioned, others are also concerned about the native advertising trend.

“Although business prospects for native advertising are positive, the medium has its detractors,” says eMarketer. “Some media executives and marketers are wary of the blurring of lines between content and advertising that occurs with native ads, particularly in the context of news sites. Others question the return on investment of these ads, arguing that native ads cannot scale for multiple placements.”

They point to recent research from MediaBrix, which found that a high percentage of U.S. Internet users find ads that appear as content misleading:

“Despite the potential backlash against misunderstood native ads, media sites under monetization pressure are turning to native advertising to drive digital revenue,” says eMarketer. “Notable examples include Forbes, The Atlantic and The Washington Post. Others such as CNN and Hearst have said they are considering it.”

You can find eMarketer’s report here.

Are you concerned about native ads, or is this the future of online marketing? Let us know in the comments.

Now, it appears that things may be looking up. According to eMarketer data, users engagement is growing pretty fast, up 61.6% as 7.6 million people in Japan logged on to Facebook at least once a month in 2011.

The figures project even more growth in the coming years, as they expect Japanese users to grow by 51.5% in 2011, 43% in 2013, and 18.7% in 2014 – which would see the country with nearly 20 million users by the end of the projections.

Although 20 million users would still only amount to 15.4% of the total population, eMarketer quotes a recent survey that shows Japan’s Facebook users (however small) are making it count:

According to a February 2012 Macromill survey of Facebook users in Japan, translated by What Japan Thinks, more than half (52.8%) of Facebook users in Japan accessed the site on a daily basis, while a quarter accessed at least twice a day.

What Japan Thinks reported that the percentage of users logging in twice a day or more tripled over last year’s figure of 8.6%. And users aren’t just logging on more often; they are spending more time on the site as well: 28% spent an average of 30 minutes or more on the site each time they logged on.

In a market that’s struggling with adoption, Facebook can take comfort in quality of quantity when it comes to their users.

Facebook’s problem in Japan (and other Asia-Pacific countries) has been well documented. A study of the reasons behind the problem by TechInAsia cites a lack of security and a complicated user interface. Also, the Japanese tend to value anonymity, and Facebook simply doesn’t provide what they’re accustomed to. If Facebook can begin to make ground in Japan, it could be great for the company as they can work to turn the newly engaged user base into a profitable one.

eMarketer, a website specializing in digital intelligence reports, has just released a review of an April 2012 DigiCareers study in which U.S. digital medial professionals were polled about their feelings toward paywalls. Though a majority of them do not abide paywalls, there is evidence to suggest that attitudes toward the content-locking shcemes are becoming more accepting.

After encountering a paywall, 52% of digital media professionals immediately leave the site. 42% stick around to weigh whether the pricing is fair. Oddly, 4% of respondents “applaud the site for their business acumen.”

As for what respondents are willing to pay for, Hollywood might be winning its public relations battle in that area. While only 8% said they had paid for radio, 47% paid for movies and 35% paid for music. Of course, these percentages are still a minority, suggesting that a simple paywall scheme for entertainment content may not be the best model.

90% of survey respondents expect a “freemium” model where at least some content is free before hitting a paywall, and 63% expect no ads once they pay. Almost as many, 61%, are willing to see ads behind a paywall, as long as it lowers the paywall toll price. In what might be the most interesting news from the survey, only one-quarter of respondents said they had a negative perception of sites that use paywalls.

With so much free content available online these days, what could possibly get viewers to pay for content? The answer isn’t surprising. eMarketer cites an Accenture study that shows over one-third of viewers are willing to pay more for content that is either higher-quality or has reduced advertising attached to it. Viewers will gladly pay for new, high-quality content; they just don’t want to feel cheated. If content creators offer their products in an easy, straightforward manner, in quality as good as that available through piracy, viewers will buy it.

(via eMarketer)

Over the last year, Twitter grew its user base 31.9%. Facebook only grew their 13.4%. This is a flip-flop from 2010, which saw Facebook growing at a staggering 38.6% and Twitter at 23.5%. So, according to eMarketer, 2011 marked the first time that Twitter overtook Facebook is user growth.

Although both growth rates will fall over the next couple of years, it appears that Twitter will continue to grow 3-4 times faster than Facebook. Check out the growth graph below:

According to eMarketer, Facebook just doesn’t have anywhere to go, while Twitter could increase it’s user base to 37.6 million (monthly users) by the end of 2014:

Twitter’s size, which is fairly small, is one factor that makes such growth rates possible. Facebook already reached an enormous audience of nearly 133 million US internet users at the end of 2011, a figure that will surpass 150 million by 2014. Twitter, in comparison, had a US user base of less than 24 million at the end of last year. Still, between 2010 and 2014, eMarketer predicts, Twitter will about double its US user base, reaching 37.6 million microbloggers by the period’s end.

Of course, the forecast is only talking about Twitter’s growth rate exceeding that of Facebook’s. When it comes to active monthly users, Facebook is still the king – by a longshot.

As if this is any surprise to anyone in the Internet know, Google’s revenues will continue to grow in 2012 but eMarketer expects that Microsoft will eventually surpass Google’s growth rate 2013 and 2014. Still, they point out, by that time Google will command 10 times the search ad revenue that Microsoft will claim.

Even with Microsoft’s greater growth rate in the next few years, Google will undoubtedly remain atop the search ad market in the United States. eMarketer expects that Google will collect 77.9% of all U.S. search ad revenues this year and, by 2014, its total market share will be 79.8%. In a bit of good news for Microsoft, who seems to be a fatal second place to Google in search ad revenue, eMarketer anticipates that the company will pull further ahead from Yahoo! and AOL as both of the latter companies are expected to lose “more than half” of their search ad revenues between 2011 and 2014.

Given that Google’s ad revenue growth over the next three years is expected to drop off precipitously, I wonder if it’s just a symptom of Google peaking. There’s only so much you can advertise, right? Then again, maybe since this is a big year for commercialized events (U.S. elections, Summer Olympics) the next couple of years might just be “off” years until 2014 when the World Cup begins in Brazil and the Winter Olympics in Russia.

According to people who understand the marketing market, the decline in print ad spending in the U.S. is expected to fall $33.8 billion this year while the amount of money funneled into online advertising is expected to seesaw upwards to $39.5 billion. Online adverting spending already grew 23% in 2011 and this year’s speculation would see an additional growth of 23.3%. Actually, barring any paper robot revolution, print ads are looking to remain static from here on out.

If bar graphs aren’t your thing, eMarketer explains:

“Advertisers’ comfort level with integrated marketing is greater than ever, and this is helping more advertisers—and more large brands—put a greater share of dollars online,” said David Hallerman, eMarketer principal analyst.

The growing amount of time consumers spend with digital platforms and advertisers’ view of the internet as a more measurable medium—especially as the soft economy forces businesses to be more accountable with their ad dollars—are both significant contributors to digital’s growing footprint, Hallerman added.

TV advertising spending, however, forecasts sunnier skies if you’re looking to sell some ads. eMarketer estimates that spending on TV advertising is expected to grow 6.8% this year and will continue to generate growth over the next few years.

One reason eMarketer states that TV advertising will continue to grow is “a result of the rapid rise of digital advertising and brands’ continued confidence in television advertising, despite increasingly fragmented viewership and the soft economy.” Duh. The television market will always be a fertile ground to plant ads because people will never stop watching television. Hasn’t anybody ever seen Wall-E?

This year’s figures show that the average adult is spending an hour and five minutes on their mobile device, but only 26 minutes reading a newspaper and an even less amount of time reading magazines (18 minutes). Combined, traditional print media is taking up 44 minutes of your day, a full 21 minutes less than mobile activities.

Time spent on mobile devices is up a whopping 30% from last year. Generic “internet” time is also up, 7.7% to be exact from two hours and 35 minutes to two hours and 47 minutes.

TV and video still rules the average adult’s day, however. Despite a small drop from 2009 to 2010, time spent watching the tube increased from 264 minutes to 274 minutes in 2011.

It’s important to note that the “time spent doing X” data is not exclusive to X. “Time spent with each medium also includes all time spent with that medium, regardless of multitasking, so an hour of watching TV while simultaneously on the internet is considered an hour of each activity.” So the rise of time spent online could have something to do with the rise in time spent on mobile devices, and vice versa.

So what do we take from this? Really, this confirms the general notion that print media is falling off a bit. Of course, mobile time increasing doesn’t necessarily mean that people are forgoing the news to play Angry Birds all day. Mobile and internet use increases probably means that people are just choosing to get their news online.

It is also interesting to see the TV and video usage rise this year. Since the eMarketer data limited this to a “traditional television set,” this could mean that fears about everyone “cutting the cable cord” could be unjustified. Or, this rise could be attributed to increases in streaming video services’ availability, like Netflix and Hulu on Xbox and PS3 consoles.

Another interesting find from the study concerned ad dollars. Most of the U.S. ad spending shares correlate almost perfectly with the percentage of time the average adult spends on the specific media. For instance, TV takes up 42.5% of the average adult’s day, and it receives 42.2% of the ad dollars.

The only discrepancy is when you look at ad dollars spent on mobile and print. I’ll let you take a took for yourself, but it appears that ad spending might be a little behind the times.

While print is clearly not “dead,” this data confirms that people are moving in the opposite direction. Have you noticed that your mobile and internet consumption has cut into your print media consumption? Let us know in the comments.

If you watch a decent amount of Television, you have probably noticed a sharp increase in the mentions of Twitter on some of your favorite shows. Networks, citing the real-time draw of the Twitterverse, have decided to create buzz for their shows by encouraging social participation. And why not? Fans have a lot to say, and Twitter allows them to say it.

The level of Twitter integration into TV can vary, however.

It can be as basic as displaying a particular hashtag at the bottom of the screen (which is oftentimes linked to a promoted trend on Twitter). Some recent examples of this include ABC News’ coverage of the royal wedding, where they encouraged users to tweet about the event using the #RoyalWedding hashtag. They even had a “total tweet tracker” graphic displayed at the bottom of the screen during the live coverage.

MTV experimented with unique hashtags during its Video Music Awards. Sporadic graphics would pop up asking questions like “What #ifbiebermetgaga? Tweet Now!”

Comedy Central’s first annual Comedy Awards also tried the promoted hashtag deal by displaying #comedyawards at the bottom left-hand corner of the screen during the entire broadcast.

Networks can encourage Twitter use even more with segments devoted to fan tweets. Comedy Central’s Tosh.0 deploys this strategy, for example. During almost every episode he not only asks people to follow him on Twitter so that they can live chat the show with him, but many times he will ask a question of his Twitter followers. He’ll then choose some of the best responses and present them on the show.

Then you have NBC’s The Voice, which is focusing on social media more than any show in recent memory. The Voice has an all inclusive social media strategy that involves Twitter integration during the live performance shows as well as their own social media guru, Alison Haislip, dubbed the “in-show and online correspondent.”

The Voice has also stepped up and asked its hosts and judges to actively participate in Twitter discussion with fans. For instance, mentor Christina Aguilera didn’t even have a Twitter account before joining the show, but created one specifically at their behest. Other mentors Blake Shelton, Cee-lo Green and Adam Levine are all active on the service.

Not only do they communicate with fans before and after the show airs, but they also have their phones readied during commercial breaks to tweet during the live performance shows. This devotion to social media seems to have worked for The Voice at least, with over 200,000 tweets rolling in about the show just in the hour it was airing a recent episode.

Another example is with the long-running CBS reality show Survivor. In the fall of 2010, people we already tweeting about the show, as about 10,000 related tweets came in during the season premiere and about 15,000 came in during the season finale. But in the spring 2011 season, when host Jeff Probst began live-tweeting the episodes, Twitter activity related to Survivor skyrocketed. The show drew well over 20,000 related tweets for most of the episodes and about 54,000 tweets for its finale. Check out this graph courtesy of eMarketer

As you can see, by having Jeff Probst live-tweet the shows, the buzz on Twitter was substantially increased in every episode of the season.

While there is no doubt that a strong Twitter presence will benefit a show’s online buzz, the question, of course, is to what degree? How many of us are actually interacting with TV via social media on a consistent basis? The figures aren’t exactly mind-blowing, but they show success in the strategy.

In another data set, provided by eMarketer, it appears that only 43% of American internet users have engaged with Television using social media. That means that over half of the people have never used one of the promoted hashtags or even talked about their favorite shows to their followers.

And out of that 43% who have engaged, only 17% reported doing so while the show was airing. Is it still a little distracting to tweet about the shows you’re watching? Possibly.

Of course, there is also the issue of DVR and the downloading of shows. Can networks create enough buzz around social media interaction that they can keep viewers focused on a show at the same time? eMarketer’s Debra Williamson had this to say -

Given the amount of activity surrounding social media and TV, some level of convergence is inevitable. But trends like timeshifting pose a potential obstacle—there’s not much pleasure in sharing your thoughts about a show when you’re watching it after it first aired. For the networks, social media may be one of the last best ways to bring viewers back together again.

Twitter and TV has been a successful venture in most cases. Can the networks successfully “bring viewers back together again” with social media? It’s possible, but viewers are going to have to start engaging with TV and social media more during the programs rather than before or after.

It’s important to note that in this research, young people aged 18-34 were much more likely to engage in social media during their TV watching. Given a little time, it might be hard to find a show on the air without a hashtag gracing the bottom of the screen.

[Blake Shelton Photo Courtesy of Mashable]

Compared to Yahoo’s 2010 market share of 10.4 percent, that would represent a drop of about one-fifth (or 22.1 percent, to be more exact).  That’s pretty much a catastrophe given the short timespan being discussed.

Things aren’t exactly supposed to bounce back for Yahoo in 2012, either, with eMarketer predicting that the company’s share of the search ad market will hit a new low 6.5 percent.  Which would represent a similar year-over-year loss of 19.8 percent.

Google’s success is mostly to blame for these pessimistic estimates, as you probably guessed.  eMarketer thinks the search giant’s market share will rise from 71.4 percent in 2010 to 75.2 percent in 2011 to 76.6 percent in 2012.

Meanwhile, Microsoft is supposed to see some gains, with its share of the search ad market moving from 10.2 percent to 10.8 percent to 11.1 percent over the same timespan, but that’s not too dramatic.

On the bright side for Carol Bartz and Yahoo, either the average investor hasn’t yet seen eMarketer’s report, or he (or she) doesn’t much care.  Yahoo’s stock is up an impressive 3.79 percent so far today following its Search Direct announcement, even though the Dow and the Nasdaq have just risen 0.74 and 1.26 percent, respectively.

eMarkter estimates nearly 150 million Internet users will be active on social networks at least monthly this year, bringing the reach of such sites to 63.7 percent of the online population. By 2013, 164.2 million Americans will use social networks, or 67% of internet users.

While the social network audience has expanded to include a large number of users from Generation X, boomer and senior demographic, the youngest age groups are still the most active.

More than half of internet users ages 45 to 64 and over four out of five 12- to- 34-year-old online users will be regular social network users in 2011. The highest penetration level of all age groups will remain in the 18-to-24 age group, where 90% of internet users will use social networks this year.

“In 2011, social networks will need to cement their relationships with their users, particularly people ages 35 and older, in order to keep them engaged,” said Williamson.

“Marketers and media companies can contribute to this effort by creating compelling user experiences that make people want to stay connected to social networks so they can gain access to experiences, deals or content they may not be able to find anywhere else.”